On Sunday I normally ride when I get home from church. I do this because I ride and get back home to eat around 1:30. Today when I walked to the garage to leave and performed the tire squeeze ritual the rear tire was flat. In order to not waste time fixing the flat (probably the same one I had yesterday on the rear tire) I grabbed another rear wheel to replace the flat tire quickly. My spare wheelset is a Bontrager model that use to ride daily on my previous road bike. When I bought my Motobecane Le Champion CF I retired the Bontragers to backup status for time like this. All I needed to do was air the tire and hit the road.

Rolling out the driveway at 11:45 I planned on going north to Community Drive and then through Valley Ranch. Today’s route mileage was 26.16 at a 15.2 mph average speed. One thing I noticed is the gearing on the Bontrager must be different from the Mavic wheel I normally use. Moving through the rear cogs to the position I normally ride at did not produce the same speed. I went one more cog and this helped my speed. I think this accounts for the lower average speed.

Also I could feel the new rear wheel more when I hit a bump. I think the different design and spoke count changes the “ride” of the wheels. Maybe I aired the tire up more than I do on the Mavic rim.

The scattered clouds did not hold the sun back much so the temperature was quite hot ranging from 90 to 96 at the finish. I stopped at the Stripes store on FM1314 to fill my water bottle and check the Garmin Edge 500 temperature reading: 102.3. This was after it sat in the shade for 5 minutes or so while I was inside the store.

I will take Labor Day off and probably bike on Tuesday. It is forecast to be 100 on Tuesday. I will patch the rear tire after lunch today.

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